§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)I beg to ask leave under Standing Order No. 20 to discuss a matter of definite public importance, namely French nuclear testing in the Pacific. You will know, Madam Speaker, that this is a genuine and meant request for a debate, and not posturing or flag-waving. I have sent you a copy of a debate from 2 July 1973, in which I moved the motion on behalf of the official Opposition:
That this House deplores the failure of Her Majesty's Government to make adequate protests to the Government of France for ignoring the decision of the International Court at The Hague on nuclear testing, and supports the two Commonwealth Governments of Australia and New Zealand in their opposition to impending tests in the Pacific."—[Official Report, 2 July 1973; Vol. 859, c. 47.]I would have preferred this request for an emergency debate to have come from the Opposition Front Bench, rather than from me as a Back-Bench Member.As the year 2000 approaches, it is desperate that a western European country should, without consultation of any kind, unilaterally impose a potentially catastrophic act on colonial territory on the other side of the world. In the south Pacific, an indigenous people's opinion has been brushed aside, and a hard-won status quo on the most dangerous of all weapons in a dangerous world has been brushed aside with it.
That France may not care about its image abroad is one thing. It is another thing altogether that a country should defy an international moratorium and, by baleful example, encourage others to do so.
It is this defiance that makes it so urgent that the House of Commons should make a judgment this very week. As one of the four remaining Labour Members who voted to go into the Common Market with the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), I am entitled 748 to say that France's European allies have shamefully underestimated the issue, in contrast to the loud and impotent outrage in Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia.
The matter is important. An apologist for France said on the "Today" programme that not one fish would be harmed. That is arrant nonsense. Apart from anything else, those who cause explosions in coral atolls had better be careful what they do. Professor Ghillean Prance, the director of Kew gardens, is only one of the witnesses who says that there is interbreeding between the coral atolls of the entire Pacific area—
§ Madam SpeakerOrder. The hon. Gentleman is now getting into a debate instead of making an application to me, and his time is up. However, I have listened most carefully to what he has said, and I have to give my decision without stating any reasons. I am afraid that I do not consider that the matter that he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20 and I therefore cannot submit his application to the House.